It was fate.
I’d never made a phone call so fast in my life.
And our future little dude was about to pull into a town twenty minutes away from Shady Valley.
I had to be there to pick him up.
I felt all fluttery in the belly at the idea of adding to our little family.
See, we’d decided not to have kids of our own. Yes, plenty of women who were Type 1 could and did have healthy pregnancies and babies. The thing was, it was really high risk. Way more than I would have expected. Especially in the first trimester. Any spikes in my sugar could mean a miscarriage or birth abnormalities.
It was a lot to worry about.
Especially considering it had never been something I felt called to in the first place.
My only worry had been if Colter would feel like he was losing out on something.
When we’d discussed it, though, he’d just pulled me down on his lap, wrapped me up tight, and told me that he was perfectly happy with what we had, that he didn’t feel like we were missing anything (except maybe a few more dogs).
We lucked out in that we existed within the club and the families there. We were surrounded by kids of all ages all the time. We could spend as much, or little, time with them as we wanted. Then go home to our quiet house and sleep through the night.
It was the ultimate win/win for us.
Not every happily ever after needed to end with babies. We were proof of that.
Though, oursdidneed baby dogs.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” I told the hound who was in his safety harness in the backseat. “We’re almost home. You are going to be the best surprise ever.”
His big, droopy eyes were the cutest shade of green.
I turned off the main street of Shady Valley and into the small neighborhood where we’d finally bought a house.
We’d ended up creating the business first, since our house options hadn’t been the best. Each one that had the right yard had a house that was way too small and rundown. If the house was right, the yard wasn’t. Neither of us wanted to compromise. So we just waited.
Until one day, a house hit the market.
We made an offer within an hour of the listing going live.
It was perfect.
I mean, it was old. It needed some work. But we kind of liked that about it. The yard was huge. There were front and back porches. The primary bedroom was massive, even if the bathroom needed to be gutted.
The kitchen was… good enough for what we used it for. I mostly only ever used the kitchen to create fancy homemade food for our dogs.
Colter, on the other hand, had been taking cooking lessons from Detroit. And, while I was in L.A. taking one of my training classes, he took a diabetic cooking class. Ever since then, he’d been cooking for us. Well, too. But also healthy. It removed a little of the math I used to have to do since he prepared so carefully.
“You’re going to be so spoiled,” I told the puppy as I pulled him out of the backseat and into my arms.
I rushed up the steps, not wanting Colter to see me before I got close enough to see his reaction.
“Where are you?” I called when I moved inside.
“Den,” he called back.
“Are the dogs out back?” I asked.
“Yeah. A squirrel is taunting them in the neighbor’s tree. What’s—”
